


Advent XXIII

by Tammany



Series: Assorted Advent Stories, Christmas 2014, All-sorts, some connected. [25]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Advent, Christmas, Complicated Relationships, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Parent-Child Relationship, References to songs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 21:59:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2789195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft and Mummy.</p><p>They do better when they're working on something. I had been going to put them in the kitchen together, but Mycroft insisted on going out to the stables to take care of the horses, thus forcing all sorts of baby-in-the-manger vibes.</p><p>It is love. It's just---complicated love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent XXIII

She found him in the stable, cleaning out the stall of one of the few horses he kept—a big black Friesian with clean, tidy hooves hidden under heavy feathering on the hocks. He raked solid rounds of dung from the clean hay and drew away the damp, soiled bedding.  The stable sound system was playing something by Sting. She recognized the edgy voice.

“You do have stable hands,” she said, her hands deep in the pockets of her anorak.

He looked up, and away. “I gave them Christmas off.”

“So you would be down here no matter what happened up at the Big House?”

“At some point,” he said. “If only to check on them. It’s not right to just leave them untended.”

She nodded. She considered a number of things she could say. In the end she silently picked up a stable spade and began shoveling his rakings into the nearby wheelbarrow.

“You don’t need to,” he said.

“I know. Do you mind?”

“No.”

When they’d finished with the Friesian they moved on to the hunter in the next stall, and then on to a stout and ancient Shetland pony.

“Good God. Surely you don’t ride him?”

“Her. Of course not. Even if she weren’t too old, my feet would drag unless I hiked the stirrups up to my chin.”

She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask. When she failed to offer a cue, he said in mixed frustration and amusement, “She belonged to a neighbor’s daughter. She…died. He couldn’t bear to sell the mare, couldn’t bear to put her down. I heard about it. This seemed like an answer.”

“So you walked on down and made an offer?”

“Don’t’ be ridiculous. I had Anthea make the arrangments by phone. Much less embarrassing and fraught for everyone.”

“Of course.”

The music changed, and she lifted her head, considering. “Valparaiso? Sting seems so broody for Christmas.”

“I find him a comfort.”

She grunted and returned to their shared task, saying only, “What next?”

“Fresh bedding—there’s a bale of straw already out. Grooming. Then fodder.”

She nodded.

When the last of the stalls was clean, they broke up the brick of straw, fluffing flakes separated from the main bale to decompress the packed grasses and fill the empty spaces of the floor. Then Mycroft clipped a lead to the halter of the pony and led her out to be clipped into cross ties. He secured her, saying, “Do you remember where the tack room is?”

“I’m not senile yet,” she said, and came back with a bucket filled with grooming tools. She tossed her son a curry comb. “You take near and I’ll take off-side,” she said, and began scrubbing wide circles over the pony’s sides and back. The fat old thing sighed in bliss as the shallow, saw-toothed tool rucked up old hairs and scoured away dead skin.

They worked together peacefully.

“Eh—look. She’s picked up a stone. How did the stable hands miss it?”

He squatted down next to her, frowning. “Small—tucked up tight under the lip of the shoe. Maybe if the lighting was poor.”

She grunted, and twisted the tip of the pick, teasing the pebble out. He caught it as it fell and slipped it into his paddock jacket pocket. Then they polished the pony to a high sheen, finishing up with cactus-cloth mitts that swept away the last bits of hair and dust and sleeked down the healthy coat, leaving the pony as bright as could be expected of a horse in its winter coat. They returned her to her stall and moved on.

“Fragile,” she said, raising her head when the music shifted yet again. She closed her yes. “That one always makes me want to cry.”

He studied her, then nodded. “I can change it, if you like. The next is Joni Mitchell’s ‘River,’ though.”

She huffed. “Hell, Mikey. You’re making me wish for ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer.”

“It’s Mycroft.”

Their eyes met. She rolled hers. “You’ll always be my baby, Mikey.”

He looked away. “You had probably best save that role for Sherlock,” he said.

“Let’s leave Sherlock out of it,” she answered, and led the hunter out.

The music played on.

_On and on the rain will fall_

_Like tears from a star, like tears from a star_

_On and on the rain will say_

_How fragile we are, how fragile we are._

“Let’s skip ‘River,’” she said, as the song finished up. “Do you have anything remotely happy lined up in the queue?”

He shrugged. “Not much. I could flip stations.”

She shook her head, but breathed a sigh of relief when he jumped forward in the queue.

_There is no rose of such virtue_

_As is the rose that bear Jesu_

_For in that rose contained was_

_Heaven and Earth in little space._

_Hallelujah, Hallelujah._

“There are so few Marian carols,” he said.

“People don’t really like to think about it from her point of view,” she said. “No matter how you work it out, it has to have been rough on her. If she really understood where the story was going—think of the grief. If she didn’t—if she was just a simple girl who’d been beset with angels and taxes and an old and suspicious husband and a long trip and lack of lodging and insane shepherds and visiting Eastern Kings bearing grave-gifts for her baby…if she had no idea of the Crucifixion…well. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?”

“I didn’t think you practiced,” he said. “I thought we just did church because it was done, and Father quite liked the vicar.”

“Doesn’t make me culturally illiterate,” she snapped. “And the music was quite nice. St. Simon’s had a decent choir and a good organist when you were little.”

“Not as good now?”

“I don’t know. The last time I was there they still had the same organist—but she always was twenty years older than me. Her fingers have slowed down and she has trouble reading the notes and her sense of tempo is….much slower. Much. But I don’t often go but for Christmas carols and Easter.”

He grunted, and leaned into the curry comb. The hunter sighed and leaned back.

“I didn’t think you practiced,” she said. “Do you want me to braid his mane? Little snail-rolls?”

“By all means,” he said. “If you’d like.” Then, shyly, he said, “I go to St. Martin-in-the-Fields sometimes. During the week. Sometimes just for the music—a concert. Sometimes for Mass. If nothing else, if I do the Cantonese Mass I keep my fluency up.”

She nodded, and went off to find yarn and a pull-through tool. When she came back she started braiding, weaving the yarn into each braid from top to bottom.

“My goodness,” he said, looking at the bright red yarn against the bay’s black mane. “Festive.”

“It’s Christmas,” she growled. “Even the horses like to feel pretty.”

“How do you know? Did you come down to the stable last night at midnight?”

She snorted, and kept braiding. After a time, she said, “I was horse-mad when I was a girl.”

“Thus explaining why you made sure Sherlock and I learned to ride?”

“It was one of the happier bits of my childhood.”

He considered, then collected a great length of yarn for himself, then shifted back to work on the hunter’s tail. He sang along with Sting, his voice similarly reedy, if not as strong or precise.

_Oh, the snow it melts the soonest when the winds begin to sing,_

_And the corn it ripens fastest when the frost is settling in,_

_And when a woman tells me my face she’ll soon forget,_

_Before we part I’ll wage a crown she’s fane to follow it yet._

She didn’t know the words, but she knew the melody. She and her son both dropped into a wordless harmony, more instrumental than lyric, each finding spots for chords, trills, ornamentation.

“When I was in college,” she said, “a friend and I took a weekend holiday up to the Lake District. On the way back down we sang. She was good—much better than I ever was. We were so busy and so happy she forgot to keep an eye on the petrol gauge, and we ended up stranded on the side of the road. In the end a farmer rescued us. He had a can of petrol in the back of his truck…”

“Was that Lou Berringer?”

“How did you know?”

He looked down the neat, clean spine of the horse, eyes sardonic. “I pay attention.”

She met his eyes. “Maybe too much, Mikey. Not everything matters half so much as you think it does.”

“Sometimes it’s the things that don’t matter much that matter the most,” he said, not backing down.

She sighed, and returned to her braiding.

They put the hunter away, neatly braided and frisking its fascination with its newly decorated status.

“Should we do the Friesian, too?” she asked. “He’s a dessage mount, isn’t he? He’d look good braided.”

“Oh, why not,” he said. “It’s Christmas.”

As they worked, she said, “What are they doing up at the Big House, do you think?”

“I would hope they’re having lunch,” he said.

“Not worrying about us?”

“Not yet.”

“When they do?”

He patted his pocket. “Anthea will call me if they’re concerned.”

She nodded. “Are you ever out of touch with your people?”

“Not in any way you’d recognize.”

“I can’t imagine living like that.”

“I doubt I could live any other way,” he replied, letting his voice make clear the universe of assassins and agents who waited beyond his barrier of protective agents. “Not as myself, anyway. Undercover is another thing entirely.”

“Abominable.”

“It goes with the work.”

She grimaced.

“You don’t approve?”

She sighed. “I can’t imagine it, Mikey. It’s so far outside anything I expected or dreamed when I had children.”

“Ah, yes.” His voice was dry. “My apologies for failing to meet expectation.”

“Dammit, Mike…”

He fell silent, but it was a militant silence.

“For God’s sake, is it so impossible to forgive me for having wanted a big family of wild, happy children, followed by a score or two of grandchildren to pamper to pieces?” Then, angrily, “I tried so hard to do my bit. But…” she broke off, then said, “Even if I’d had the big family, nothing I tried to do ever seemed to prosper. I tried so hard to give you a better life than I had. Safe and protected and cared for.”

“I know,” he said. “I recall working just as hard.” Then…. “Mummy’s Little Helper.”

She grimaced. “It’s not as though it’s easy to think, ‘My child is quiet, polite, helpful, responsible…what’s wrong with this picture?’ It was Sherlock who always seemed to need attention. The squeaky wheel.”

“And you loved fetching the oil can.”

“Pot, kettle,” she snapped.

He sighed, but cocked his head and shrugged in resigned agreement. “I wanted to be good.”

“You were good.”

“I didn’t understand that being good doesn’t get you loved.”

“You were loved. You _are_ loved.”

He hummed uncertainty.

She growled under her breath. “Hell, Mikey. I remember you—from the day you were born. You were so aware—sometimes it gave me stage fright. But I loved you so much it hurt, and no matter what I did, all you responded with were those big, quiet eyes. Sometimes I thought you hated me.”

“Sometimes I did,” he admitted. “Nothing I did seemed to work.”

She tied off a neat rosette on the Friesian’s neck, admiring the crimson yarn and the gleaming black mane hair. She slapped the horse’s neck, fondly. “Everything you did worked. You were so good at everything it was invisible. Seamless.”

“Let’s sing,” he said, sadly.

“Let’s,” she agreed. They joined Sting in “Gabriel’s Message.”

“He does good Christmas songs,” she said.

“More Marian stuff than most.”

“You notice that?”

He shrugged. “She—moves me.”

She didn’t comment.

The horses were put back in their stalls. Mycroft went down the way and loaded a clean wheelbarrow with the blocks of compressed commercial feed, and tossed a bale of sweet, deep green hay on top. He trundled it back down to the stalls. “A flake of hay in the hay bags,” he said. “Two shovels of feed in the manger.”

She nodded. “Seems so odd to put kibble in the manger, and hay in the bag. Baby Jesus would like the hammock better than the manger, these days.”

He nodded. “Softer.”

When they were done they leaned against two of the supporting upright poles, and studied the animals happily eating.

“Why is it always easier when we’re working on something?” she asked, mournfully.

“Because we’re both rather good at competence. Just—bad at feelings.” He sighed. “Without Father we three would probably have killed each other long since.”

“He is a dear, isn’t he?” she said, her voice smiling.

“Yes, he is.”

She drew a breath. “Yours is, too, love.”

He stopped, dead-silent. Then, shyly, he nodded. “He is.”

She laughed, then, under her breath. “And can I expect grandchildren? Even of only by surrogacy or adoption?”

He sighed heavily. “ _Mummy!_ ”

She laughed. “Just think about it, Mike. I’d love to have grandchildren.”

“I never would have guessed.” He shivered. “You never know what you’re stepping into with children, though—do you? Certainly Sherlock and I didn’t come out as expected.”

“No,” she said, honestly. “But I love you both anyway.” She reached out and took his hand, gripping it tight—waiting until he returned the pressure before letting go. “Well,” she said, then, voice brisk. “I’m famished, and I’d like whatever they’ve left of lunch up there. Coming with me?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I think I need a little more time with the horses. Tell them if there are presents left we can finish opening them in the afternoon before dinner.”

She nodded, but said, gently, “Don’t take too long, Mike. We’ll miss you.”

He nodded.

When she was gone he spent time leaning against the warm flank of the Friesian, fingers tracing the neat, tight knots Mummy had braided and tied into the stallion’s mane. He smiled at the bright red bows

Sting’s voice shifted again, eerie and mournful and haunted, singing the dark words of _Bethlehem Down._ Mycroft shivered, and turned the music off quickly. He checked the water in the automatic troughs one last time. He stroked the faces of the animals. Then he left, walking through pewter afternoon light in a vast wilderness of snow. But as he walked, the words clung to his mind, and he found himself singing them to Sting’s remembered melancholy.

_Here he has peace and a short while for dreaming_

_Close-huddled oxen to keep him from cold,_

_Mary for love and for lullaby music;_

_Songs of a Shepherd by Bethlehem down…_

**Nota Bene:** Gads. This one is tons of music. Some are Christmas music, mostly from Sting’s _If on a Winter’s Night…_ More are not.  Let’s see:

[Valparaiso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zzuWh1Fcn0)

[Fragile](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxR3TGvzv3E), (I’ve given you a link to a recording I REALLY love: Chris Botti on horn, Yo-Yo Ma on Cello, Sting on Lute and vocals…Aieeeeeee. Gorgeous….)

[There is No Rose of Such Vertu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJbVj1gOIRc): this is a medieval piece in a setting by Benjamin Britten, sung by Sting.

[The Snows They Melt the Soonest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sltfZXiqk8c): traditional English folk song, again sung by Sting.

[Gabriel’s Message](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DpCJY6QEMI): used previously in this series, but well-suited for the two to sing together. Again, Sting sings it.

Mention is made of Joni Mitchell’s “[River](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCov0TYXBp8).” They skip it.

Finally, [Bethlehem Down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQcoR9T7VTs).

I would like to say something about Bethlehem Down and its [lyrics](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sting/bethlehemdown.html). It’s by Peter Warlock, back in 1927. It’s sad, and eerie, and far too theologically aware. It’s one of those rare Christmas songs that insists on pointing out that the reason we celebrate the baby is because he dies. And, yes, is risen—but Black Friday lurks in every twist of this carol. Thus, because I really do like having Black Friday and Easter lurking in my Christmas, I adore it.

I have given you links to Sting (and of course, Joni). Mycroft’s listening to Sting—and I’ve always seen him as a natural to love the artist. (I mean, come on—all the way back in “Analysis of a Self-Portrait” I’ve been portraying Mycroft as liking Gordon Sumner’s work. They seem made for each other.) That said, one of the things I have come to love doing is looking for alternate covers of songs, and almost all of these, both Sting’s own work and the old traditional pieces, have other covers by other great artists providing other superb interpretations. I REALLY recommend at some time you go browsing covers. It’s very rewarding.

On a more practical note: a lot of horses these days eat what looks like giant chunks of compressed gerbil food. Those hen’s-egg sized knobs of grass and clover and other ingredients get dumped in the manger. If there is also hay, it is often offered in a hay bag—an openwork bag that makes the animals work a bit for their pleasure, and ensures they don’t gorge on the hay all at once. That provides good stimulus, some entertainment, it provides some worthwhile mobility exercise for the head, shoulders, neck and face. It ensures the animals are more likely to have something to nibble over the whole day. But it also means that the manger is full of knobby lumps of rocky kibble and the soft hay is hanging up in a “hammock.” Baby Jesus would have much preferred to be laid in the hay-bag hammock than in the manger full of chunky feed.

Oh--and yes, I have decided to let Mummy sing after all. In spite of what she told John. I think she's just embarrassed that she's not excellent, merely a duffer. But someone had to ensure Shelrock got his Suzuki violin training, and much as I adore Father and his humming, the passion to make sure Sherlock got training seems more like Mummy. So I'm letting her be a Tiger Mum with enough of a love for music to be sensitve to both boys--and to Sherlock's particular talent.


End file.
